I know there’s a ton of controversy going on in the freelance writing community regarding what kinds of jobs and pay freelance writers should accept. To be honest, the main reason I know about it is because Deb’s been talking about it over on the main Freelance Writing Jobs blog. (See “Freelance Writing: The Great Divide.”) Personally, I don’t get too caught up in all the drama. I’m thankful to say that I’m actually too busy with my freelance writing gigs to worry too terribly much about what everyone else is up to.
That said, there are certain freelance writing gigs that really, really annoy me. If an ad asks for someone to “rewrite” articles, for example, I tend to sneer and skip it entirely. I don’t mind the idea of certain topics being rehashed in different forums, but when the client is more interested in the percentage of words in the new article that are different from those in the old article…well, I’m going to go ahead and be judgmental and condescending.
Today, as I was researching for a client, I came face to face with exactly why this type of thing annoys me so badly. Ladies and gentlemen, I present you three different articles, all supposedly written by the same person. I won’t publish all of the text here, but you’re sure to get the point.
Example One:
“First, research and identify who your target clientele is, and what characteristics they share that make them valuable to you. If you have developed software that organizes and manages an online calendar, you probably will not want to target 14-year-old skateboarders. But it is not enough just to identify an age category or an activity your target market shares – you need to consider socio-economic status, buying habits, and potential for up-selling. I may be in Porsche’s target age group, but I am definitely not in their target tax bracket!”
Not too shabby. I suspect this one was actually written by the author. The next two, however, are those ridiculous “rewrites.” At best, they flood the Internet with pointless articles. At worst, they’re often unintelligible.
Example Two:
“First, research and identify who your target patronage is, and what characteristics they share that do them valuable to you. If you have developed software system that organizes and manages an online calendar, you probably wish not want to target 14-year-old skateboarders. But it is not enough simply to identify an age category or an work your target market shares – you need to consider socio-economic status, buying habits, and potential for up-selling. I may be in Porsche’s target age group, but I am decidedly not in their target tax bracket!”
Example Three:
“First, research and identify who your target people is, and what characteristics they share that do them valuable to you. If you have developed computer code that organizes and manages an online calendar, you probably wish not want to target 14-year-old skateboarders. But it is not enough simply to identify an age category or an work your target market shares – you need to consider socio-economic status, buying habits, and potential for up-selling. I may be in Porsche’s target age group, but I am emphatically not in their target tax bracket!”
And, just in case the various, slightly different versions of the article aren’t annoying enough, there seem to be no less than a dozen instances of the same (or barely changed) article slapped up on all manner of sites. I find it kind of gross, to tell you the truth.
(And, yes, I realize that I’ve now sort of added to the spamming with this particular article, but I just couldn’t let it go.)
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